Paradigm Shift
by Snickerer
Summary: Real selves are tricky things to pin down. Fakir undertakes an experiment. Postseries. Oneshot.


Disclaimer: I only own the bits I came up with.

This is not what I thought would be the first sign of life out of me since the septic tank really hit the turbines.

It's not actually one of my primary fandoms. It is in fact pretty much the first thing I've gotten /for/ this fandom since the last I posted for it, and is actually an image that dates back to the same era AS the last piece I posted in this fandom. Everything else that's wandered through my head since has been for other series (and largely resisted being actually written).

This is why I hate the bunnies. A lot.

I also have the terrible feeling that the reason I never wrote this up when it first landed on me was that I saw someone else do it way back then. But pointing this out completely fails to make the bunnies shut up about the image. As you can see, I give up.

Any anonymous comments will get answered in my profile whenever I next find a chance to breathe. 

* * *

Fakir hesitates for a long time before he finally tries.

It's risky, even for him. Or perhaps especially for him; that he doesn't know for sure is probably an indication that caution is warranted.

He's not a knight anymore, and dancing never did conjure whole stages out of the air for him even then. Nor does this have to do with his still-nascent abilities as an Author - unless, of course, it has everything to do with it.

And that's the heart of the matter, isn't it?

There is the resolution they have lived by, the pact they made in the cold and lonely dark of the lake bottom as the hopeless final confrontation loomed. They agreed, then, that they would relinquish the illusions, no matter how comforting or familiar they had become. They agreed that they would see things to their close. No matter how much it hurt.

They agreed that they would be _themselves_.

And they have. They lived that cost, and saw it through, and bore witness to the end.

And now they are picking up the pieces, and living out their promise, and the last of the aftermath is settling into the shape of the world. There is space to breathe, and maybe dare to wonder...

But, caution warns.

It would be cheating. It would go back on _everything_.

Wouldn't it?

It would be exactly what they had agreed needed to end.

Unless it wouldn't be at all...

For a long time the uncertainty stays his hand.

But in the end, it all comes down to that quiet, unspoken hope; and if he is to use this, he must first master it, and to do that he must first make it work, and _this_, if it does work, cannot help but be right...

He's been a tree. This cannot be so very different - except in all the ways that of course it is.

And so it is that one morning he stands at the edge of the pier, his usual chair and pen and paper absent, and stares unseeing out over the water, seeking the echo in his spirit of raising his arms as skyward branches. Tries to push deeper, past the pattern of vessel and leaf to the way of _reaching_...

Ahiru tilts a puzzled little yellow head at his silence. "Quack?"

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, ignoring her, before thinking better of it and doing the opposite. He calls memory and details, of feathers, of bill and tail and how wings fold and how webbed feet move, not just shape but weight and fit and motion and meaning, how it would be, how it must be, how it _feels _-

- he reaches out, eyes still closed -

o o o

Several long, blinking, wide-eyed seconds pass before Ahiru can grasp the sudden presence on the pier of the fine dark drake peering at the glossy feathers of his half-spread wings, so dark they might seem black if not for the deep green gleam in the sunlight.

And then realization hits, and the water is abruptly churned by a tizzy of little yellow duck flapping in a panicked circle, quacking frantically _Ahhh! Fakir!_ and _how did he do that, why did he do that, aaaaaaaah what if he gets STUCK-!_

The drake turns toward her with a slight, faintly amused tilt of the head. _Such a fuss over that? Really, even if I was... Living as a duck can't possibly be_ that _difficult if_ you_ can manage it_.

Ahiru stares for another moment of stunned surprise, a strangled quack wrenching its way free - _I understood that - he understood ME - but I can hear that it's really quacking -_

She doesn't realize her consternation has flapped her right up the pier until something settles over her still-flailing wings, gently pressing her down onto the wooden planks. Sitting, she blinks for another second before realizing that Fakir has literally taken her under his wing, looking quietly amused by the whole situation. She looks down, abashed, unthinkingly nestling against the comforting stability of his presence much as she had the first time he'd picked her up in her duck-shape, then blushes as she realizes what she's doing.

She can't quite bring herself to glance up at his expression, but he doesn't seem to mind, and the larger wing resting over her doesn't pull away.

o o o

The most important part, of course, comes afterward.

Fakir can't quite seem to tell whether he's nervous or not.

Ahiru definitely is, fidgeting anxiously from foot to foot and ruffling her feathers. Fakir pecks lightly at the errant feather at the top of her head in lieu of pulling the pigtail she doesn't currently have and is promptly rewarded with an indignant look. He smirks at her a little - apparently he needn't be human to manage that - then pulls away and closes his eyes once more.

Normal. He has to think about what's normal. This form already feels far more natural than he had vaguely expected it would.

For a moment, he's not sure how to start.

Perhaps he should approach it in a slightly different way.

He thinks of dancing, the sure line of arm to hold a sword, the angle of a pirouette.

He thinks of the arch of fingers to grasp a pen, the delicate control of writing, the motion of flipping pages.

He thinks of sitting at the edge of the pier that has become so familiar, the way it feels, sensation and weight and balance, how a palm against wood braces an arm so that he can draw one leg up to rest the other wrist on the knee.

He _reaches_.

He opens his eyes, looking out across the lake, smiling. And then he stirs, lets his hand fall against the wood of the pier as he turns and looks down. The avian eyes that meet his are wide in amazement and not a little relief. He can tell that Ahiru is about to recover her train of thought and start flapping again in worry and confusion and wanting to know why he'd done that, so he lets a corner of his mouth tug up in a fond little smile and gently scoops her up, shifting so that she can settle against him with a fluffing of feathers and a questioning little quack.

And he does his best to explain.

He'd looked for other ways - he and Autor both had searched hard and long - but in the end, invoking anything else really would have been cheating.

It was fitting, really, that the one path that might still be his by right was also the simplest and most straightforward.

For he _is_ an Author, and a dancer. And he's shifted form before without drawing on any power but his own strength in these.

(And if he'd needed outside assistance to get back _then_, well, he knows better now. And... as he told her. Being a duck - or a drake - can't be that difficult if Ahiru can manage it. And at least he'd have company.)

When they renounced the assumed, imposed identities and agreed to stay true to their actual selves, it had not been a pledge not to change.

Because real people do change, as they go about their lives; only lost and broken storybook princes remain forever static, and they have already shattered the invisible prison of Drosselmeyer's Story and won everyone's freedom.

The trick is that real selves are described by labels. Not defined.

And there is nothing to stop them from adding to those descriptions.

He has given up false roles, but this cannot be an infringement on his true self if it draws only on his own volition and his own power.

The only question had been whether those would be enough to make it work, and there had been only one way to find out. Now they know, and he just needs to figure out precisely how it works...

He must in order to master it, of course.

Because until he masters it - or, more precisely, until he masters everything about the shift back to human and how exactly it happens -

Well, how else is he supposed to be able to teach it? Especially with a student he's certain is going to need an awful lot of patient instruction?

Just because Ahiru's real self is a duck now doesn't mean she _has _to be. After all, her real self is still also a dancer, and a heroine. And if she can learn the trick for herself, of shifting through her own capacity...the shape she uses it to take will belong to her in truth.

Ahiru blushes, not looking him in the face, but he somehow suspects that she doesn't object to this plan at all.

* * *

...because the bunnies always have thought Fakir would make a very impressive drake. (Mind, I've always thought the bunnies are completely /mental/, but well.)

Though with my luck this has gone and become a popular-to-the-point-of-cliche plot during my extended tenure of having fallen off the internet...


End file.
